Our Sucker Diplomats Getting Played By Iran's Con Men

Nuclear Terror: The United Nations has found that Iran is aggressively developing nuclear-capable missiles, as the ayatollah defiantly orders their mass production. Tehran is the con man; America is the sucker.

An age-old poker hustler's maxim states that if within a few minutes you can't figure out who the chump is at the table who'll be leaving with his pockets empty, that means it's you.

The U.S. sat back down at the negotiating table with Iran on Wednesday practically wearing a sign that says, "Suckers!" Our diplomats are in Vienna — the city nearly overrun by Islamic armies in 1683 — not to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran but to get a deal, any deal.

With the self-inflicted pressure of the November interim agreement's expiration now hanging over Western diplomats' heads, getting no new deal will mean we're back to before the "breakthrough" six months ago, grandly announced in V-E Day-like fashion at a 3 a.m. signing ceremony at the Palace of Nations in Geneva.

The pinstripes can't live with that embarrassment.

To them it doesn't matter that a new United Nations Panel of Experts report, obtained by Reuters, warns that "Iran is continuing development of its ballistic missile and space programs," that a new launch site was discovered last summer, that the finishing touches are being made on the "Khomeini Space Center," or that an observation facility, purportedly for monitoring satellites, was made operational.

It doesn't matter that ever-smiling "moderate" President Hassan Rouhani over the weekend said that Iran is being asked to accept "nuclear apartheid." Or that a defiant Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered his Revolutionary Guard to "mass produce" nuclear-capable missiles as "a main duty of all military officials."

Moscow, Tehran's ally and longtime nuclear enabler, just publicly backed the Islamofascist regime on missile development's being kept off the negotiating table.

The UN report complained that Iran's missile program "is opaque and not subject to the same level of transparency that Iran's nuclear activities are" under the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.

As Iran seeks metals, fuel and guidance-system components for missiles, "similarities between Iran's ballistic missiles and space programs can make it difficult for states to distinguish the end-uses of procured items," according to the UN expert group.

In February, Tehran test-launched a new generation of long-range missiles with multiple-re-entry warhead capability. If that doesn't sound like nuclear-weapons preparation, it's hard to know what would.

Whatever deal our 21st century Neville Chamberlains soon pridefully wave at us will include only Tehran's paper promise to reduce uranium enrichment to fewer centrifuges, not discontinue it. That means that Iran can still develop nuclear-weapon fuel.

Their deal will "alter," not close, the Arak heavy-water plant, which could be used for a plutonium bomb. And it won't require inspections of plants where work on missiles or a nuclear detonator could be taking place.

When the Free World gets up from this high-stakes poker table, it won't just leave penniless. We will find ourselves with a nuclear six-gun at our heads.

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